Best ATX P55 Gigabyte board?

Hey Tony!

first of all many thanks for this amazing blog and for your help! I'm not new to hackintoshes but man! you opened a brand new world to me!!

I'm putting together a new machine which I will mainly use for audio (Logic and Cubase) and am trying to decide among the various Gigabyte P55 models listed in your DSDT database... ok I know I'm not the only one!

Since I plan to OC it and I already have the case I'd rather stay with an ATX form factor (only reason not to go for your same board!!) and possibly go for an P55A model in the hope that USB 3.0 and Sata III will be supported by Apple one of these days.

I've read MANY of the threads here and am somehow confused on what would be the best choice (for example the P55A UD6 thread seems to imply that FW doesn't work whilst it does on your P55M UD2).

So... I'd greatly appreciate an advice from you and from all of you in order to go and get a P55A that can lead to the best possible benchmark and is solid at least with Firewire (will need it with my RME audio card), eSata and 1Gbit LAN.

Should you rather reccommend a normal ATX P55 (without USB 3.0 etc) then please let me know.

My 2 cents... Maybe it would be also cool/useful to open a new thread where each of us may report his own configuration together with the relevant Geekbench results?

Many thanks in advance to anyone who's willing to share an advice for my first P55 box!

Ciao,

Ricky

Based on my research I went with the Gigabyte P55A-UD3. It seems to be fully functional using Tony's tools, is within my price range and compared to the other Gigabyte P55 boards had all the features I was most interested in. (I wanted USB 3.0 and Intel Turbo support). Be sure to make use of the comparison chart tool on the Gigabyte website before making a choice, when I compared the three mobos I was looking at buying the UD3 won out in a side by side comparison).

Save a few pennies and go for the P55A-UD4 or UD4P depending on which model is available on your corner of the world. FireWire works fine on those models (built a UD4 for a mate and I run the older non A version of the UD4P). Both models have all the features you need and then some without paying for a lot of extra bits that doesn't add any real value for a hackintosh. The UD3 boards are in my opinion just not as good. The only reason to go for the UD5/UD6 is because they have powered eSATA connectors if you have something that uses that, or you want a third x16 PCI Express slot (although this is severely limited at it's x4 at the most and not even that if you use SATA 6Gbps and USB 3.0).

I'll let the ATX P55 users contribute their experiences but I have a few things to add.

1. Pretty much any Gigabyte board will do- I'm able to do full DSDT edits for these, and willingly keep the entire line current and available.
2. Look and see what other users (ahem... thelostswede) have.
3. Get what you'd want for features, like you would if you were shopping for a Windows machine.
4. It's almost more important to get a functional graphics card

Good luck! Let us know what your final build is, and we'll check it over.

thelostswede said:

Save a few pennies and go for the P55A-UD4 or UD4P depending on which model is available on your corner of the world. FireWire works fine on those models (built a UD4 for a mate and I run the older non A version of the UD4P). Both models have all the features you need and then some without paying for a lot of extra bits that doesn't add any real value for a hackintosh. The UD3 boards are in my opinion just not as good. The only reason to go for the UD5/UD6 is because they have powered eSATA connectors if you have something that uses that, or you want a third x16 PCI Express slot (although this is severely limited at it's x4 at the most and not even that if you use SATA 6Gbps and USB 3.0).

Click to expand...

The UD4 and UD3 boards are virtually the same with minor differences, the main one for me being that the only 4 series in stock at Fry's was 184.00 vs. 134.00 with a 10.00 rebate for the UD3.

The only difference is a firewire port onboard on the 4 (I already have a couple of pci firewire cards), slightly more SATA ports, an e-sata port and the 889 audio vs the 888. For me the UD4's added ports aren't needed and the extra money went into buying the quad core i5 750 instead of a dual core i5. After checking all the reviews I'd go with the boards having different features but I'd have to disagree with the UD3 being "not as good".

Except the OP wanted USB 2.0 and SATA 6Gbps...
On top of that he wants FireWire which none of the UD3 boards offer.
So I stand by my choice, for what he wants, the UD4 boards are better.

I plan to dual boot windows for a few games yet to be available on Mac so the USB 3 and SATA 6 on the UD3 are usable for me and given it was cheaper than the 4 series why spend more?

Mac will add support for USB 3 sooner or later, if not from Apple then perhaps from another source. I have 4 USB drives all are 1 or 1.5 TB used for media storage, since they are all SATA drives inside I plan to take them apart and mount them in my new hack unless I can find a really good deal on USB 3 drive cases in the near future. (The lag on USB 2 drives has made using them on my Macbook pure torture).

If the OP had said he needed built in e-sata and firewire I could understand paying more for the UD4. Are the UD4 drives cheaper than the UD3 in other countries?

Thank you very much for your prompt reply!

@ ne0shell: thanks for your suggestion with the P55A-UD3. I actually used the comparison chart tool a lot but found it was missing some basic information (some boards look exactly the same in the comparison tool!). P55A-UD3 (and P) are cool but both miss firewire which I need and only UD3P has eSata and it looks like the P model is not even distributed here in Italy.

@ thelostswede: thanks. P55A-UD4 looks like my go at the moment (P55A-UD4P appears to only have the second Lan port + Smart TPM which I doubt would be used by Mac Os X... :? ). Totally agree regarding the third x16 on UD5/UD6. Looked very exciting until I read about the x4 limit and that USB 3 and Sata III gets disabled if you use it! Are you sure about the powered eSata on those top models? I can't seem to find this spec on the Gigabyte site.
In the contrary the six ram slots are something quite appealing to me but probably not worth the price difference between UD4 and UD5/6 anyway.
Found this nice review which may help others make up their mind (at least it helped me! ) http://www.overclockersclub.com/reviews ... d4p/22.htm

@ Tony: well thanks again for your help and availability with DSDT. Very good point u make regarding GPU... your Sparkle seems really cool as it's silent but since I want to connect 2 DVI monitors I should also consider either a dual DVI or a DVI+HDMI.

Does anyone have experience with this other Sparkle card? (with NVIDIA GeForce 9600GT) http://www.sparkle.com.tw/product_detai ... sub_id=341
Looks like what I'm looking for and not too expensive!
Any suggestion for an alternative silent (no fan) 1GB dual DVI or DVI+HDMI card?

Anyway here's my tentative setup:

Mobo: P55A-UD4
CPU: i7 860 with Zalman CNPS9500 LED
GPU: Sparkle NVIDIA GeForce 9600GT (SX96GT1024D3G-VPP)
HD: a) 500GB 50/50 dual partition SL / W7
b) 1TB for data
RAM: 8GB Corsair Dominator 1600Mhz CAS8 (CMD8GX3M4A1600C8)

Of course any comment is very very welcome!

Thanks again!
Ricky
PS can't wait to add a signature with these specs!!

Looks like a solid setup to me.

Gigabyte has some passive cards as well, but they're dual width and I don't know how widely available they are. Something like this maybe? http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Products/VGA ... uctID=2911
The passive cooling on those cards are much more efficient and they're using dual heat pipes. Here's a slightly different version if the first one isn't available any more http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Products/VGA ... uctID=3078
I'm sure there are other cards to chose from too, but I'd get something with a sizeable heatsink if you're going passive.

With regards to the six memory slots, again, not a feature worth having, as if you fit memory to all the slots, then the four white slots can only use single sided modules, which aren't all that common to be honest. And you're right, the extra Ethernet port and TPM isn't really worth it, but in some regions both models aren't available. It's a bit of a shame that Gigabyte has cut down the UD3 models so much in its P55 range, as the P35/P45 UD3R and UD3P were pretty feature complete boards in comparison.

You might want to consider a better CPU cooler though as Zalman really isn't what they used to be and it's also rather old by now which means you can get a lot better performing models. If you must have Zalman I'd suggest something like this instead http://www.zalman.com/ENG/product/Produ ... sp?idx=355 although that might be a bit overkill...

Cool, glad to hear!

I've checked out the two Gigabyte cards you suggested. Looked interesting but not available here unfortunately. Found this other passive card: http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Products/VGA ... uctID=3104 which costs around 30 Euros more than the Sparkle model but definitely agree to have a better heatsink (dual width).
Thanks for pointing out about this. I wasn't taking it into proper consideration.

Didn't know about this 6 slots limitation. This really sucks and clears up the last mild indecision to go for UD5 I had in the back of my mind.

It hurts to read your views about Zalman because... I already have a brand new CNPS9500 LED ...Guess I will try it and just buy a better one later on if I'm not happy. Indeed it's not the latest for sure. I have it since a year or so (gotta buy the 4 Euros clip for the 1156 socket).

Thanks again for your help. Cheers, R.